Aunt Dimity and the Lost Prince (19 page)

I waited until he’d returned from the samovar, then placed my glass on a nearby table
and leaned toward him.

“Mr. Markov,” I said, “I can’t begin to imagine what you must think of us—”

“Then I’ll tell you,” he cut in with a congenial smile. “I think you and your friend
aren’t in the habit of sneaking into strange houses to rescue old men. I think you’ve
both gone to a great deal of trouble out of concern for me, and for that I am grateful.
I don’t know what prompted your concern, but I expect you’ll tell me.”

“We will,” I said earnestly, “but before we do, I have to ask one more question: Have
you spoken of your family’s history with anyone else recently?”

“Yes, of course,” he said, his smile widening. “I spoke of it a few weeks ago with
a charming little girl named Daisy. She sat here with me while her mother polished
the silver. Daisy was curious to know why I spoke with a funny accent and where my
pretty ornaments came from. She was a good listener. Do you know her?”

“I’ve met her,” I said. I cleared my throat. “You may not be aware of it, Mr. Markov—”

“Come, Lori, we are old friends by now,” he said. “You must call me Misha.”

“Okay,” I said hesitantly. I didn’t feel as though I deserved to be treated so graciously.
“You may not be aware of it, Misha, but Daisy invented a story about you.”

“Did she?” he said. “How delightful.”

“It’s not a delightful story,” I said. “It’s an alarming one about a prince who was
stripped of his treasures and locked in a dungeon by an evil man. There’s a lot more
to it, but because of it, Bree and I spent the past week searching for someone who
fit Daisy’s description of the lost prince.”

“And you thought I fit it?” said Mikhail. He gave us a half apologetic, half pitying
look. “I’m sorry, but you’ve been misinformed. As I said before, I’m not a prince.
No one has stolen anything from me and as you can see, I’m not locked in a dungeon.
What led you to believe that I was the person you were seeking?”

I took the silver sleigh from my shoulder bag and handed it to Mikhail. His face softened
as he received it. He ran a fingertip along the sleigh’s runners and over its curved
back. He caressed the horses’ heads, their wild manes, their prancing hooves. He held
the glittering creation in his palm to catch the firelight and heaved a deep sigh.

“Yes,” he said, his gaze fixed on the sleigh. “It’s my father’s work. He made six
of them for a client who fled Russia before she could collect them. He sold five to
finance the building of his London workshop, but he kept the last one for himself—a
relic of a vanished age. I showed it to Daisy, explained to her what it was, how it
should have been used, and by whom.” His gaze shifted from the sleigh to my face.
“How did it come into your possession?”

I told him about Skeaping Manor, the charity shop, and the pink parka. I repeated
the story of the lost prince in full and I described the circuitous route Bree and
I had followed in our quest to discover whether or not the story might be true. I
was on the verge of explaining how our conversation with Gracie Thames had led us
to Tappan Hall when I heard the sound of footsteps in the corridor.

Mikhail heard them, too.

“Am I to be rescued again?” he said, turning his wheelchair to face the door. “What
an exciting evening this has turned out to be!”

“A
nd to think I intended to spend the evening alone with a good book,” Mikhail mused
aloud as he tucked the silver sleigh beneath his blanket.

Bree and I, still caught up in our roles as his protectors, placed ourselves between
him and the door.

“Did you leave the front door unlocked?” Bree murmured.

“Probably,” I replied. “I was trying to locate a light switch at the time.”

“Great,” Bree said, rolling her eyes.

“You’re the one who wanted to play spies,” I retorted, stung. “Now’s your chance to
show off your karate.”

The door opened and we braced ourselves for battle, but the two men who gazed at us
from the doorway didn’t appear to be armed or dangerous. The one on the left was probably
in his early thirties, handsome, tall, and broad-shouldered, with short, tightly curled
black hair and a neatly trimmed beard. He wore a well-tailored three-piece suit and
carried a black leather briefcase.

The other man was Miles Craven. He, too, wore a three-piece suit, but his was a vintage
1940s pinstripe in immaculate condition. His mouth fell open when he saw us, but his
eyes registered surprise rather than alarm.

“Good evening,
Dedushka
,” the bearded man said, looking past us at Mikhail. Though the exotic word tripped
lightly off his tongue, his overall accent was that of an educated Englishman. “Forgive
me for intruding. I didn’t realize you had”—he eyed us perplexedly—“guests.”

“My social life is picking up,” Mikhail told him. “May I introduce Lori Shepherd and
Bree Pym? Lori and Bree, I believe you know Mr. Miles Craven, the curator of the Skeaping
Manor museum, but I don’t believe you’ve met my grandson, Alexei.”

“You’re Al Markham?” I said to the bearded man, remembering the dire accusations Lady
Barbara had leveled at him.

“Alexei Markov, please,” he said, his eyes flickering toward his grandfather. “I no
longer use the name Al Markham.”

“Take a seat, all of you,” said Mikhail, motioning for the rest of us to follow him
as he moved his wheelchair back to its spot near the fire. “I’m getting a stiff neck
from looking up. There’s tea if you want it.”

The five of us sat in a half circle before the hearth, Mikhail in his wheelchair,
Bree and I on the sofa, Alexei and Miles in a pair of Louis XV armchairs. Alexei put
his briefcase on the floor beside his chair and looked expectantly at his grandfather.

“You cut your stay in London short,” Mikhail observed conversationally.

“Mr. Roublov has a cold,” Alexei explained. “When he canceled tomorrow’s meeting,
I decided to come home. I didn’t want to waste money on a hotel room.”

“My grandson,” said Mikhail, turning to Bree and me, “is learning the family business
after a few years spent exploring other options.”

“You’re not a financial adviser anymore?” I asked Alexei.

He seemed reluctant to reply, but after his grandfather gave him a small nod, he said,
“I left the profession two years ago.”

“Tell them why,” Mikhail said gently.

“Dedushka,”
Alexei protested, looking mortified.

“Tell them why,” Mikhail repeated in the same gentle tone. “Tell them all of it. Confession
is good for the soul, Alyosha, and in this case, it may clear up one or two unfortunate
misunderstandings. Go on,” he prodded.

Alexei looked confused as well as embarrassed, but he squared his shoulders and obeyed
his grandfather’s instructions with as much dignity as he could muster.

“My career as a financial adviser was a complete cock-up from start to finish,” he
said, gazing stoically into the fire. “I was an overconfident young idiot, a showoff
who thought impressing his friends was more important than keeping faith with his
family.”

“His late mother—may she rest in peace—spoiled him,” Mikhail interjected.

“I always had more money than sense,” Alexei acknowledged, “and I was raised to believe
I was too good to go into trade. When I turned twenty-one, I put Alexei Markov behind
me and became Al Markham. I set out to make a name for myself in the City, got in
over my head, and fell flat on my face. By the time I recompensed my clients, I was
broke.”

“We all make mistakes,” said Mikhail, with a casual shrug.

“My mistake was to place style above substance,” said Alexei. “My so-called friends
turned their backs on me at the first sign of trouble, but Grandfather stuck by me,
as solid as a rock. He gave me a chance to start over.”

“When your grandson’s in trouble, you help him,” Mikhail said nonchalantly. “It’s
what grandfathers do.”

“I sold my Lamborghini,” Alexei continued, “got rid of my flat in London, and sacked
the high-priced toadies my mother had hired to work at Mirfield. I put my nose to
the grindstone and immersed myself in all aspects of the silver trade, from the work
floor to the auction room.” He sounded like a young man determined to prove his worth
as he met his grandfather’s gaze and said, “When I take the helm of Markov & Son it
won’t be because I’m the heir apparent, but because I’m the best man for the job.”

“I believe you,” Mikhail said. “We all make mistakes, Alyosha, but hardly any of us
learn from them. I believe you are one of the few who has, and I salute you for it.”

“Spasibo, Dedushka,”
Alexei said quietly.

“And now,” Mikhail said, turning his attention to Bree and me, “let us unravel the
misunderstandings that brought you here tonight. It seems to me that little Daisy
blended my story with my father’s and added a few dramatic flourishes of her own.
I became a prince because only a royal personage could live as I do, in a big house
filled with pretty things. I, not my father, was driven from my homeland by a band
of wicked men. In Daisy’s mind, my wheelchair became a dungeon and I, its prisoner.
When the saltcellar I’d shown her turned up at Skeaping Manor, she assumed an evil
man had stolen it from me.”

“What?”
exclaimed Alexei, jerking upright in his chair.

“Patience, Alyosha. I’ll explain later.” Mikhail gestured for his grandson to be silent
and said to me, “I hope my grandson and I have convinced you and young Bree that you
have no cause to be concerned about my well-being or about the custodianship of my
possessions.”

“What about the silver sleigh?” I asked, frowning. “How did it find its way to Skeaping
Manor?”

“I didn’t steal it from my grandfather,” Alexei burst out indignantly. “I lent it
to the museum a month ago,
with my grandfather’s permission
, as a way of thanking Miles for taking time out of his busy schedule to tutor me
in Edwardian silversmithing techniques.”

Miles Craven stirred himself to speak. “I don’t pretend to understand what’s going
on here, but I believe I’ve been accused of receiving stolen goods. If so, I must
protest my innocence.”

“You didn’t behave like an innocent man when we spoke with you in your flat on Tuesday,”
said Bree. “You were all sweetness and light until we asked you for Amanda Pickering’s
address. Then you went all twitchy and furtive and showed us to the door as quickly
as you could.”

“You also live a bit high on the hog for a museum curator,” I added defensively. “It
looks as though you’ve spent more money on your flat than on the museum.”

“So I’m . . . I’m an
embezzler
as well as a . . . a
fence
?” Miles sputtered. He crossed his arms tightly across his chest and looked away from
us, his nose in the air. “I refuse to dignify such utter nonsense with a reply.”

“I would, if I were you,” Mikhail murmured. “They’re a pair of terriers, these two.
They’ll hang on to your coattails until you shake them off.”

“We’re not stupid,” Bree asserted. “We know the museum’s security system is a joke.
Dummy cameras, invisible security guards . . .” She gave a derisory laugh. “If you’re
not spending the endowment’s money to improve the security system, Mr. Craven, what
are you spending it on?”

“You may not be stupid,” Miles said in clipped tones, “but you are
colossally ignorant
.” He unfolded his arms, touched a finger to his tie, and regarded us with complete
disdain. “The Jephcott Endowment is funded by a combination of investments, government
grants, and private donations, all of which have dwindled to a trickle over the past
few years.”

“As a rule,” said Alexei, “cultural institutions suffer greatly during times of economic
stagnation. Miles’s museum has suffered more than most.”

“It has,” Miles agreed. “Skeaping Manor is a minor museum in an out-of-the-way location
and, as you yourself pointed out to me, Mrs. Shepherd, most of its collections don’t
appeal to a mainstream audience.”

“There’s been talk of closing the museum permanently,” Alexei put in.

“Talk which I have done my utmost to combat,” Miles said passionately. “If I have
been unable to maintain the museum’s security system at a level you deem adequate,
Mrs. Shepherd, it’s because I’ve been forced to spend every available penny on keeping
its doors open to the public.”

I opened my mouth to speak, but Miles cut me off before I could utter a single syllable.

“
Furthermore,
” he said acidly, “I receive no salary from the endowment. I am allowed to live in
the manor rent-free, but my work at the museum is done on a purely voluntary basis.”

“How do you make a—” Bree began, but Miles cut her off as well.

“I make a living, Miss Pym, as a consultant to those who buy and sell curiosities,”
he said, “and by educating those who, like Mr. Markov, value my wide-ranging knowledge
of the Edwardian era.
Finally
,” he concluded, his nostrils flaring, “I will attempt to put an end to your unhealthy
obsession with my personal finances by informing you that I
inherited
most of my furniture from my
mother
!”

I was ready to slink out of the room with my tail between my legs, but although Bree
had the decency to look abashed, she couldn’t keep herself from pressing MIles Craven
for an answer to a question he’d failed to address.

“I’m truly sorry for misjudging you,” she said contritely, “and I hope you manage
to keep the museum going because I know two little boys who will be devastated if
it closes. But you still haven’t explained why you behaved so strangely when Amanda
Pickering’s name came up on Tuesday.”

Miles Craven’s anger seemed to dissipate. He blushed, plucked at his sleeve, and shifted
uneasily in his chair. For a breathless moment I thought he was about to confess to
having engaged in a bit of rumpy-pumpy with Daisy’s mother.

“If I behaved oddly,” he said, “it was because I was trying to prevent myself from
telling you something I’d been told in the strictest confidence.”

“Miles is hopeless at keeping secrets,” said Alexei.

“He’s worse than the cook your mother hired,” Mikhail agreed. “Mrs. Harper couldn’t
keep a secret if her life depended on it. Luckily for us, she got her stories so mixed
up that she never told anyone the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth
about our private lives. You’d best come out with the truth, though, Miles, or Bree
will never stop badgering you.”

“Oh, I can reveal the truth now,” said Miles. “I can’t begin to tell you what a relief
it will be to get it off my chest.”

“What truth are you talking about?” I asked.

“The truth about Amanda Pickering, of course,” Miles replied.

An all-too-familiar gleam lit his eyes as he huddled forward and lowered his voice
to a confidential murmur. My neighbors’ eyes gleamed with the same intensity whenever
they were about to impart a spectacularly juicy bit of gossip.

“Amanda Pickering and her husband were never divorced,” said Miles. “They’re as happily
married today as they were on their wedding day.”

“Has her husband been hiding in a cupboard for the past year?” Bree asked.

“He hasn’t been hiding anywhere,” Miles replied. “He’s been in
Australia
.”

“No,”
Bree and I exclaimed, astonished.

“Yes!” Miles countered gleefully, clearly relishing our reactions. “Stephen and Amanda
Pickering decided to emigrate a little over a year ago. Stephen went ahead to find
a job and Amanda stayed behind to pinch pennies until he’d earned enough to bring
her and Daisy over. Amanda didn’t want her employers or her landlady to know she might
bail out on them at the drop of a hat, so she kept her plans to herself.”

“She
was
hatching a marvelous scheme,” I said, recalling Lady Barbara’s hunch.

“Why did Amanda confide in you?” Bree asked Miles.

“Because I walked in on her when she was having a little chat with Daisy about the
wonders of Australia and how much happier Daisy would be when she was reunited with
her daddy,” Miles said. “It didn’t take much effort on my part to put two and two
together. I promised to keep
schtum
about the whole thing, but it hasn’t been easy. As Alexei said, I’m hopeless at keeping
secrets.”

The cogs turning in Bree’s head were drowned out by the fireworks exploding in mine.
Suddenly, everything made sense.

“The one time I met Daisy,” I said, “she told me she and her mother were on their
own because, to use her exact words:
Daddy left
. I thought she meant her parents had split up, but she was describing a less permanent
separation:
Daddy left for Australia, but we’ll join him as soon as we can.
”

“She was miserable,” said Bree, “because her dad was half a world away and she didn’t
know when she’d see him again. A year is a long time for a kid her age. It must have
seemed like forever to Daisy.”

“Amanda rented the cheapest flat she could find,” I said, “and she worked six days
a week because she was saving up for the big move.”

“Stephen must have sent for her and Daisy around the time Daisy took the silver sleigh
from Skeaping Manor,” Bree said excitedly. “That’s why Amanda donated Daisy’s winter
clothes to the charity shop. She knew Daisy wouldn’t need them in Australia.”